Among the several games I’ve been playing for a while but haven’t yet got to post about, the most recent is Warframe: a free to play, cooperative third-person shooter in a space-opera setting where humans have spread all over the solar system and became divided into three factions which wage constant war on each other. You get to play as one of the factions, the Tenno, who seem to be much more human and much less populous than the other two (the Grineer and the Corpus). What they lack in numbers, the Tenno make up with the ingenuity of their use of warframes: the powerful, partly humanoid, nearly indestructible war machines that the Tenno operate remotely. The basic gameplay involves doing various missions in teams of up to four players. But there’s much, much more to Warframe than that — and not all of it is good.
Category: Reviews
Fail Seven Times
By Kris Ripper
I’m very conflicted about this book. It annoyed me to no end, yet I was interested enough to keep reading it. The main character, Justin, is a gay man who’s been in love with his best friend, Alex, since early adolescence. They’re both grown men now, and Alex has been in a good, stable, open and somewhat kinky relationship with a woman, Jamie, for a while. Alex and Jamie want to include Justin in their sexual relationship and he wants quite desperately to be included in it, but if he simply said, sure! there’d be no story to tell. So instead he stubbornly and stupidly resists it on the grounds that he’s not built for romance, that he’ll screw things up and lose his best friends, that he doesn’t deserve their love and that he has a duty to protect them from himself. And that’s what the book is about.
The Honours
By Tim Clare
I got this book as a token of support for the author, whose wonderful writing podcast, Death Of 1000 Cuts, I’ve been listening to daily for a month now. I knew it’d be good. In his podcast, Tim explores pretty much every conceivable aspect of the writing craft from his own unique perspective. The episodes where he analyzes excerpts submitted by listeners offer an even deeper insight into what he considers good writing. And obviously I approve of his standards or I wouldn’t be listening to his show. THE HONOURS did not disappoint — but despite the positive prejudice, I ended up with mixed feelings about it.
Warbooks
I took several warbooks to my seaside vacation last month and managed to read three. I’ve never read that genre before and I wanted to get acquainted with it in the name of research for one of my writing projects. My picks were essentially random, from the several dozen old pocket books I inherited from my father and largely ignored because they’re mostly stuff I’m not interested in – books about the Second World War and Vietnam, books about mafia, books about Japan and books based on a variety of successful movies*. Anyway, the three books I read are, in the order I read them: GOING AFTER CACCIATO by Tim O’Brien, AN AFFAIR OF MEN by Errol Brathwaite and AND THEN WE HEARD THE THUNDER by John Oliver Killens. And the extraordinary thing is, not one of them is really a warbook.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
This unique game draws the player into the frightening world of Senua, a young Celtic warrior, as she’s pushed over the edge of sanity upon discovering that her lover has been tortured and killed by the Vikings. She launches on a dream quest to wrest his soul from the clutches of death, a journey that takes her — and the player with her — through the depths of her personal hell. It’s an experience both disturbing and deeply touching, deeply human. A story of love and courage in the face of torment and despair, presented through incredible acting, stunning visual and audio effects, and last but not least, engaging and fun gameplay. Hellblade is one of those very rare games whose value reaches far beyond good entertainment.
Hyperion
By D. Simmons
After reading the first of four books, I wrote a one-line comment on Goodreads saying, “Liked it despite numerous annoyances.” After reading the second, I change my statement to “Didn’t like it despite numerous qualities”. These are mainly related to the author’s indisputable ability to create and maintain suspense, and to surprise. Book one ends with a cliffhanger so epic that I had to pick up book two immediately. But I won’t be reading the rest of the series.
Continue reading Hyperion